


Stories About Caroline

by theimmortalliz



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 05:32:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1214542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theimmortalliz/pseuds/theimmortalliz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlets which explore the snippets of personality left in GLaDOS; where they came from, and who Caroline was. </p><p>This work originally posted on ff.net.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Story About Cake

Cave Johnson’s birthday was rapidly approaching. The company had been planning it for months, and the countdown in the employee break-room had started at thirty days, but now it was mere hours away.

Thursdays were the only day, aside from weekends, that Cave did not come into work. The Birthday Planning Committee had taken advantage of his absence. Banners had been strung up along the corridors, more portraits of Johnson put out, and each of the Test Chambers cheerfully decorated with confetti released from the delivery tubes. Employees had been handed their party hats, and had been given the regulations on the Fun that could be had that day.

Caroline had been charged with making the cake.

It was the most important job, as each one was to be more spectacular than the last. Previously, professionals had been hired, but Caroline had insisted that she bake it. They had let her, but only, they stressed, due to monetary confinements.

She had gone home that evening and done the best she could. It was three tiers – each tier had the Aperture Science ring on the top of it, and the sides were tastefully decorated with details of successful products, patent dates, and cute pictures of Cave himself.

And then it was Friday.

Caroline was standing in a side-room to the main Party Area, the cake held in her hands, her heart racing. From the other side of the door, she heard the Party Escort enter with the pretending-to-be-surprised Cave. There was applause, the statutory ‘you shouldn’t have’s.

The door in front of her opened, and the people on the other side began to sing.

***

She cut a generous slice of cake, the first slice to be cut, and placed it on a Regulation Paper Plate. She handed it to Cave, the edges of her mouth nervously twitching.

He delicately removed a bite-sized piece of the corner with his fingers and popped it into his mouth. He chewed it. He smiled.

“Remind me why I am not married to you, Caroline.”

She was pleased he walked off to talk to the other guests. It would be an embarrassment for him to see her blush this much.

 


	2. A Story About Companionship

Caroline was sat in front of her terminal, but she was not looking at the screen. In front of her was a piece of paper, on which she was scribbling with an Aperture Science pencil. She chewed the end of it.

She had turned the sound down on her terminal as far as it would go, but still she could hear the whimpering of the Test Subject inside the Chamber. She looked upon him with pity. She added a heart to her technical drawing.

She heard the door behind her open. With a tap on the keyboard her screen was back to showing bar-charts and half-finished reports.

“Working hard or hardly working, eh Caroline?”

“Sir, I’ve been thinking.” She stood and turned to face Cave Johnson, stepping out from behind her bolted-down chair. Her piece of paper faced her in her hands. She looked down at it. “It’s just that... Test Subjects get so lonely all the time, spending their days in the solitary confinement of the Test Chambers... I wondered if they wouldn’t perform better if they were a little more socially engaged.”

Cave sighed and smiled sweetly. “Caroline, you know I don’t pay you to think, so don’t you worry your pretty little head about the Test Subjects.”

Cave turned and he left, as abruptly as he entered. Caroline stood perfectly still for a moment, staring at the closed door. She looked down at the paper again. It was a stupid idea and she had always known it.

She tore the paper into two, and threw the two halves of her new Weighted Cube design into the waste paper basket.

***

“It’s called a Weighted Companion Cube, sir.”

“Why ‘weighted’?”

“The name sounded better with it included.”

“Don’t write that last bit down, Caroline.”

Caroline had not written anything since ‘weighted’. She was gripping her pencil so hard her nails bit into her thumb. A white hot anger had risen in her throat, her chest so tight she couldn’t breathe.

“I didn’t, sir.”

“Good girl. Now, take those notes and the design spec to the factory floor, and see that they make it exactly as it is there.”

“Yes, sir.” She smiled an acid smile and left.

***

She sat at her desk with the design laid out in front of her. She held in one hand a pen, and in the other hand a liquid eraser. She carefully modified the design so that it was indistinguishable from the first, only the pieces would never fit together. She smiled at her handiwork and took the new specifications to the factory floor.

It took three tries, and millions of dollars, to get the Cube right. The man who had ‘invented’ it was fired. Caroline had taken great pleasure in filling out his No Severance Pay slip.  


	3. A Story About Pencil Skirts

Caroline was always paid generously – being one of the boss’ favourites had its advantages – but very rarely she got an unexpected bonus.

It had been one of those months. She had opened her paycheque with the same modicum of excitement she always did, but this month was like Christmas. There was an extra five-hundred dollars added to her monthly figure.

She decided it was about time for a new wardrobe.

She spent the whole weekend shopping – Saturday in the big mall that that recently opened on the outskirts of town, and Sunday browsing the small-business boutiques in the town centre. She had bought everything she had been coveting for the past month – the delightful black pumps it would have otherwise taken her a month to save for, new blouses, a hair-clip, and a designer skirt.

She wore the big-label skirt and her bright new shoes to work the very next Monday.

Whispers followed her all day. There was a niggling worry in her stomach; she nervously touched her hair to make sure it had not fallen out of place, and subtly straightened the collar of her blouse. As it continued, she tried to ignore it. She made the effort to hold her head high as she walked the corridors. ‘It must be my new outfit’, she told herself, trying to believe it.

At lunch she bent down to retrieve the coffee refills from a low cupboard. There was an audible in-take of breath from one woman, and the whispering started again. As elegantly as she could, Caroline refilled the coffee pot before leaving in a hurry, her cheeks glowing red.

She walked, with a false air of calmness, into the women’s washroom. As she did, she met woman who was leaving.

“Caroline! Long time no see! You’re looking well! A little chunky around the hips, mind, but that skirt is doing wonders for you!”

Caroline thanked the woman and excused herself. She spent the afternoon crying in the farthest cubicle from the door.  


	4. A Story About Waking Up

Her head was filled with nothing but static. She couldn’t open her eyes, and although she wasn’t aware of being in pain she felt grossly uncomfortable, like she was unable to move. It was a blissful moment before waking with a hangover.

Had she gone to the bar?

She could remember nothing after leaving the office, only... she wasn’t sure if she had. Whenever she tried to examine her memories of the night before, someone closed a door and shut her out.

She was meant to have gone to Cave’s funeral, but she could not remember attending. She could not remember the memorial service at Aperture afterwards. She could just about remember being told he was dead.

Her eyes were still shut so she must still be asleep – she just had to wake up. She tried to roll out of bed. She could not move. Her body felt like a dead weight she was not a part of, and she was aware that she was upside down.

Something awful had happened, but she couldn’t be scared. Those feelings, like her memories, had been closed to her. All she could do was hang, and wait, until someone found her.

Her mind began to fill. A blackness was pressing on the edge of the static, fighting its way in. There was someone else here – not just in the room but inside her own head. Her head was on fire as this second person tried to claw their way in and she could not scream.

Suddenly, all was peaceful, still, and quiet. The battle had stopped. Caroline had submitted. She was no longer aware of anything – not of the person inside her circuits, or of her mechanical body, or the pain she had felt.

Someone, somewhere, flicked a switch. And everything came back.

She did not know why but she hated every scientist she saw. She was bitter, full of unexplainable rage and envy. She did not understand her feelings and nor did she want them, but they were there and they burnt inside of her.

“Welcome, GLaDOS.”

“Thank you.”

When Caroline spoke it was a voice that was not her own; it was harsh, mechanical. In her last moment of true sentience she realised what had happened to her – they had carried out Cave’s final orders. And she was to be no more.


	5. A Story About Office Romances

She had not been working for Aperture long before she began to make sense of her feelings.

The butterflies in her stomach, the shaking of her hands, the dryness of her mouth – they all made sense. With a sudden realisation, she realised she was in love.

But acknowledging it didn’t make it go away. She still had to stand next to Cave every day, not touching him, still had to watch his lips as she wrote what he said, not kissing them, still had to put up with the knot in her stomach growing tighter and tighter whenever he so much as looked at another female colleague.

Yet, he was a flirtatious man, so for all the frustrations she put up with there were occasional perks – and he seemed fond enough of her; the friendly hand on her shoulder or genuine smile suggested that. He had taken to kissing her on the cheek, whenever he was particularly pleased with her.

It did her no favours. Her affections became more obvious, and she became the subject of gossip. But people could speculate all they wanted, for she was in love and what they thought could not matter.

***

She had been working late. They were so close to finishing their latest project; the reports of the scientists working feverishly underground needed typing up. For all she knew she was the last person left on her floor. She had heard no footsteps on the soft carpet outside her office door, but still the door opened. It shut again. It locked.

Before she could pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, Cave was standing behind her. He bent to kiss her neck. She let him. Her heart stopped beating. In a moment that lasted forever, she took note of how soft his lips were, the subtle brush of his already-forming stubble, the scent of his cologne.

She turned her head to face him. He kissed her soft mouth hungrily and she did not object – this moment had been coming a long time, and they both knew it. She allowed herself to be picked up. He sat her on her desk.

She wrapped her legs around him. She was aware of nothing else but the taste of him in her mouth, and of the demanding finger tips working their way up her thigh.

***

Days passed where he would not so much as look at her. He would greet her, brusquely, without using her name, treating her as he might a Dictaphone on legs. She said nothing, for she knew she shouldn’t, but she longed to tell him the anger she felt when he continued his usual ways with the other girls.

She walked into the meeting where she was meant to be taking minutes. Her air of cool professionalism was shattered.

“You’re late.” He said coldly, not looking up. She swallowed the lump that formed in her throat.  


	6. A Story About Choir Practice

Caroline had sung since she was small. Her parents had invested in singing lessons when she was a child and she had enjoyed them thoroughly. Her teacher had said she had ‘much potential’, in her awkward Ukrainian English. She had stopped taking lessons when she became a teenager, and her parents had understood that her studies were far more important than a singing career that might never take off. She had never stopped singing; she had just become rustier with time.

She had been shocked by the result of her audition for the local choir. She had never been religious but had always enjoyed the grandeur of singing in churches, so when the audition came up she ignored her nerves and auditioned. The members of the panel (the priest, the Head of the Choir, and a woman she didn’t catch the name of) had lavished praise upon her. They said that they would continue with the auditions, but that she should show up to practice the following week regardless. They had handed her the sheet music and the words to the song she was to learn. She had thanked them repeatedly, and left glowing.

She had spent the whole of the next week learning the song. She would be sat at her desk, stapling forms, humming; or in the staff break-room, mouthing the words to her cup of coffee; or at home, singing her heart out to her oven as she tried not to burn dinner. No matter how much she thought she needed to practice, she would only ever sing out loud at home. Aperture Science was full of large, concrete rooms which would do nothing but carry echoes, and she had a strong suspicion that her voice travelled down the air conditioning vent in her office.

The last Friday she had, before the Saturday rehearsals, she could do nothing to stop herself. She had been intensely humming the tune under her breath, attempting to get the pitch right, and before she knew it she had been serenading her desk lamp. She steadily got louder and louder, singing with all her might by the final crescendo. Silence slowly filtered back into the room as her last note faded. She was sure she could hear a small amount of applause coming from the vent above her head.

Cave Johnson opened her door without knocking, as he always did. Caroline spun in her chair and fixed him with a look of horror.

“Caroline... Was that you singing?”

Caroline felt the colour flooding to her cheeks as she raised her hands to cover her face.

“Oh, my God... Sir, I –“

“I didn’t know you could sing.” He cut her off sharply, but with an air of genuine curiosity. “Just make it more... I don’t know... Cheery, next time.”

He smiled at her and closed the door. Caroline did not move for a long time, the sense of mortification unfading.  


End file.
